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Poverty in Haiti Also by Mats Lundahl Poverty in Haiti Also by Mats Lundahl THE DISTORTED ECONOMY (with Hans C. Blomqvist, 2002) Poverty in Haiti Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects Mats Lundahl Palgrave macmillan © Mats Lundahl 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-28941-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-33092-8 ISBN 978-0-230-30493-2 ()eBook DOI 10.1057/9780230304932 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lundahl, Mats, 1946– Poverty in Haiti : essays on underdevelopment and post disaster prospects / Mats Lundahl. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Haiti—Economic policy. 2. Haiti—Economic conditions— 1971– I. Title. HC153.L85 2011 338.97294—dc22 2010042401 10987654321 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 For Bo, who put me on the track Contents List of Tables and Figure ix Preface x Prologue: Will Haiti Rise From the Ashes? xi Part I History 1 Five Decisive Events in the Economic History of Haiti 3 2 Economic Interests Are Color-Blind: On Class Divisions in Haitian History 19 3 Poorest in the Caribbean: Haiti in the Twentieth Century 26 Part II Contemporary Problems 4 Economic and Political Forces in Haitian Underdevelopment 59 5 The Haitian Dilemma Reexamined: Lessons from the Past in the Light of Some New Economic Theory 73 6 Income and Land Distribution in Haiti: Some Remarks on Available Statistics 107 7 Some Economic Determinants of Haitian Migration to the Dominican Republic 125 Part III The Failed Transition 8 Another Failed American Occupation? 155 9 From Kleptocracy to Democracy? 160 10 Problems of Policy Reform in the Haitian Economy 172 11 Sustained Growth in Haiti: Pipe-Dream or Realistic Possibility? 188 vii viii Contents Part IV A Future for Haiti? 12 Hating the United States Does Not Help Haiti 221 13 After the Earthquake: What Future for Haiti? 227 Author Index 272 Subject Index 275 List of Tables and Figure Tables Chapter 6 1 Distribution of labor income, 1970 109 2 Land distribution by number of farms and size, according to the 1950, 1971, and 1982 censuses 114 3 Land distribution in 1950 according to Gérald Brisson 114 Chapter 13 1 Haiti’s position in the Transparency International corruption perceptions index 239 Figure Chapter 10 1 Ruler revenue and cost functions 174 ix Preface This book collects a number of articles that I have written on Haiti since 1992. They deal in different ways with the question of why Haiti has failed so badly in terms of economic and social development dur- ing its entire existence as a sovereign nation. Basically, the reason is twofold. Even with the best government in the world, the country has an extremely severe erosion problem – the worst in the Western Hemi- sphere – caused by the growth of the population. The second reason is that Haiti never had the best government in the world. Ever since inde- pendence, it has been plagued by a series of rulers that have paid little attention to the vast majority of the people. These two themes form the backbone of the book. The different chapters range from an analysis of the economic history of Haiti to a number of current problems. The failure of policy reform is brought out, and an effort is made to identify possible ways out of the stagnation and retrogression that has characterized the country during the recent decades. Finding bright spots has always been difficult, and after January 12, 2010 the task is more daunting than ever. The final chapter brings the analysis of Haiti’s plight up to date (mid-2010) and attempts to identify the main challenges and priorities that Haiti must deal with during the next couple of decades. I came to Haiti for the first time in August 1969. At that time, I was a 23-year-old university student of business and economics at Lund University. One of my economics teachers was Associate Professor Bo Södersten, later Professor of International Economics at Lund. He had been to Haiti for a week in September 1968, and it was he who urged me to go there. His urge was the beginning of a more than 40-year affair with the country. In spite of all the dark aspects of Haitian life I have never regretted it. This book is dedicated to Bo. Virtually all the chapters in the book have been published in different contexts, given at the end of each chapter. They are reprinted by per- mission of the various publishers. My secretary Lilian Öberg, as always, has had to shoulder a heavy load in the preparation of the manuscript. Needless to say, I am very grateful to her. Stockholm, June 5, 2010 Mats Lundahl x Prologue: Will Haiti Rise From the Ashes? Haiti is one of the least enviable countries in the world. Two-thirds of its people are peasants who have to eke out a living on less than 1 hectare of land. Over three-fourths of the population have to make do on less than two US dollars a day, around fifty percent on less than one. Haiti never had a decent government. The country has always been governed by kleptocrats. It is no coincidence that two military interventions by the United States took place during the twentieth century. The country is regularly hit by hurricanes, no less than 4 in less than 3 weeks in 2008. On January 12, 2010, Haiti suffered its worst catastrophe yet. The capital, Port-au-Prince, with a population of more than 2 mil- lion, was devastated by the strongest earthquake ever registered in the country. The world reacted immediately. Money poured in to mitigate the effects of the catastrophe. Suddenly, Haiti became everybody’s con- cern. But for how long? Internationally, Haiti has always been a pariah, a country where nothing works and that no one wants to get engaged in. The interest flares up in connection with elections or natural disasters, but thereafter it quickly fades again, and Haiti falls back into lethargy and mismanagement. Between 1957 and 1986, Haiti was ruled by François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, ‘Baby Doc’, two of worst Latin American dictators ever. After a chaotic 4-year period with military rule, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president in 1990, with an absolute majority of the people behind him. Aristide had been a priest in a poor parish, and he lit the hope of democracy and a better future. Unfor- tunately, the hope never came true. The military threw him out the following year and when he returned in 1994 it was as one more link in the chain of predatory presidents. In 2004 he had to leave the country once more. Aristide had chosen to forfeit the opportunity to change the history of the country. It is difficult to qualify Haiti as anything but a failed state. Aristide’s successor René Préval did not do much to change this fact. Without the presence of UN military and police Haiti in all probability would have sunk into total chaos. In 2009, a poverty reduction strategy for the coun- try was finally presented. It never left the office desk. The earthquake cleared the agendas of the international organizations completely. xi xii Prologue: Will Haiti Rise From the Ashes? Haiti’s fundamental problem is the fragile ecology of the country. It has the most severe erosion problem in the Western Hemisphere. Nine million people on a surface as large as that of Belgium or Maryland have slowly but steadily pressed food crop cultivation up the mountainsides and seen to it that the country is almost devoid of forest. When the trop- ical downpours arrive, exactly when it is time to sow and plant, the soil is washed down into the valleys. New land must be used for food cul- tivation, and so on, in a cumulative process which has depressed rural incomes for an entire century. As a consequence, Haiti has almost ceased to be an agricultural exporter. Today, four-fifths of its exports derive from the textile industry, the only organized production sector in the cities.
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